Last month, the Obama Administration informed the Senate of its treaty priorities via a letter from the State Department (you can access it here). The letter lists 17 treaties for which the Administration seeks Senate advice and consent "at this time," including (as predicted here and here) CTBT, CEDAW, and UNCLOS. It also lists 12 treaties "on which...
I'm on the fly, but quickly wanted to post this update to my earlier posts on targeted killings and Predator strikes. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial execution, Philip Alston, has called for an investigation into US Predator drone attacks. Here is a quick news story on it. I think the press account somewhat overstates matters - I would characterize...
Karen DeYoung has a very interesting account of the on-going Predator drone campaign in Pakistan, on the front page of the Monday, June 1, 2009 Washington Post, "Al Qaeda Seen as Shaken in Pakistan." The story is sourced to US intelligence and military officials, as well as some Pakistani officials, and recounts how the Pakistani army's campaign to retake the Swat...
Jack Goldsmith observes in a Washington Post op-ed that when one avenue of national security closes, another is opened up, sometimes with worse collateral consequences for third parties. As he says: Demands to raise legal standards for terrorist suspects in one arena often lead to compensating tactics in another arena that leave suspects (and, sometimes, innocent civilians) worse off. I think this...
I want to believe in the Human Rights Council, and I hope its new members -- including the US -- will improve things. But the HRC's "response" to the conflict in Sri Lanka is simply appalling. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the resolution the Council passed praising the Sri Lankan government, which reads like something out...
Former State Department Legal Advisor John Bellinger, who is now at Arnold & Porter and also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. The U.S. government can and should be a strong voice for redress of human-rights abuses around the world. But these lawsuits, which are being brought under...
Today's New York Times leads with the story of Pentagon plans to form a new cybercommand: The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on...
Following on my previous post, this is a much longer and more complete clip of the waterboarding of talk-radio host Mancow Muller. (Thanks to Roger, who found it on YouTube.) This clip includes an explanation of how waterboarding is done and includes Muller's reactions. I thought the way he explained that it was much worse than he ever would have...
Hat tip: The Faculty Lounge As if they ever go right? Anyway, this was a publicity stunt by conservative talk show host Mancow Muller, but it seems to have gone wrong in an unexpected way...
A year ago, Alex Ross, the New Yorker's classical music critic and the author of the book The Rest is Noise, wote a post on the New Yorker Online about the use of music as a psychological weapon. Ross recently posted a short update on his own blog. The original essay began with a reference to the use of music in interrogations: In Errol...
In the category of happy news that is long overdue, it looks like Secretary Clinton is poised to expand the definition of State Department employee "family members" eligible for benefits to include same-sex domestic partners. For Foreign Service employees those benefits will include --perhaps most important -- the issuance of a diplomatic passport (the "black passport"), which carries with it...
Given all the recent talk about the future of Guantanamo, it may be of interest to readers that, Dr. Michael J. Strauss, a lecturer in international relations at the Centre d'Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris, has a new book called The Leasing of Guantanamo Bay, published by Praeger Security International. Here’s the description from the press release: Post-9/11 events at the U.S. naval...
